


here we are: at the beginning

by inthehandsofourown



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Young Justice - All Media Types
Genre: A little graphic, Dick Grayson-centric, Gen, One Shot, dick grayson is my son and this is my ramblings about how much i love YJ S1, mentions of the grayson family murder, mostly about being happy!, not a spoiler, ummmm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 03:29:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28521690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inthehandsofourown/pseuds/inthehandsofourown
Summary: Flight is impossible. Fear is guaranteed. Dick Grayson comes from a family of fliers and he has long learned to defy both these things.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 18





	here we are: at the beginning

**Author's Note:**

> shout out to my friend for giving me brain worms and feelings! anyways, love her, and i dived into this because Young Justice is top tier, 10/10.

Richard “Dick” Grayson is born to parents who love him, to wings that let him soar through the air, and to a circus that reminds him home is where people are. He’s a bright young thing, quick to learn and quicker to adapt. 

He’s naturally talented at many things. The rest is taught. (Everything can be taught.) 

Happiness is one, and happiness, he comes to learn, is a choice. Coming from a family of performers, Dick is raised to be larger than this life, than his body, and the act that follows. His family teaches him how to smile and in the end, real or not, what ends up mattering is the action. What his audience sees and what he gives to the world. 

To smile then, is to defy an indifferent one, to accuse its inevitability of apathy and unkindness. His smile is a choice. He chooses wisely.

Dick is three years old and he runs before he walks. (A sign, he thinks later on, of the best friend he will meet.) 

He stumbles, falls, and gets back up. His first routine there and with that, he’s ready for more. It doesn’t take long for him to fly. His mother takes him first, to the trapeze, to the ropes without a net, and speaks to him in the many languages he’s taught. All of them are not enough to describe the feeling when his hands leave the bars and he’s _flying, high, higher, higher, higher!_

The crowd never stops roaring, and the performances keep coming. The applause never ends. 

Why does it have to? Why must it? 

But what goes up, must come down. 

Dick is nine years old and his family is dead. 

The night is cut short and the performance he remembers is abrupt and brutal. _Snap_ , goes the rope, _snap,_ goes their necks, and _snap,_ goes their bodies, and the applause ends. Suddenly, flight feels impossible. It does not stop there. Life can be cruel, life can be cold, another lesson and a cost that cannot be measured. He’s alone. 

The circus has to leave, abandoning him to the grounds of Gotham, and his wings are clipped. His smile is lost. 

Enter: a bat, a man, a grieving orphan. 

(Mirror, mirror, tell this story differently.) 

Exit: innocence, vengeance, loneliness. 

Dick is thirteen and he’s flying again. With a _team._

The years with Batman, with Bruce, let him take to the skies Gotham. Lets him stretch his wings, high above the city, and far into the dark. He is the name whispered and shouted, mocked and revered in the streets of Gotham. Robin, of his mother’s words and his family’s colors. He likes those years and he fights hard for them like any Grayson would.

But with this team, _his team_ , he’s more. More than just the dynamic duo, or even on the normal days of Bruce and Dick and Alfred. 

When he laughs, another joins him, red and yellow with impossible lightning, with an old warmth and constant thrill. When he trains, a green blur is all he catches before an arrow shoots out, nearly clipping his shoulder and he meets her quip for quip as he dodges. Dick is not alone, not anymore and laughter rings through the air. 

To lead, he finds, is not what he wants after all. Not with the strength of a wise friend, a close brother, the apprentice of a King, guiding his way. Robin finds it better to fall back, to fill in the space with the others who are beyond this world but rooted in the orbit of this earth. They remind him, with great irony, how best to be human. 

Happiness is a choice. He smiles. He soars. 

He chooses. 

(Dick Grayson is born into a family of Graysons who know how to fly. He can trace his lineage back to performers that have never once thought about ordinary life—about touching the ground with a heaviness of life’s gravity. When he loses the circus, it’s harder to imagine anything past the loneliness. 

But still, he knows the routine. He brushes his hands, dusted with chalk, and figures out how to fly. Dick Grayson leaps into the air, Robin lands on rusty rooftops, and they both glide through the skies. 

Flight is easier when taken with company. 

And he’s not alone anymore. 

_High, higher, higher, higher! Fly!)_


End file.
